The Coldwater Haunting

by Michael Richan

  “It helps me sleep.”

  “Jake, stop. Come on. I need your help here.”

  Jake kept loading his bag, looking determined.

  “I made it all up, alright?” Ron said, realizing he needed to change gears. “I was just yanking your chain. You said all that stuff about the house being haunted last night, and I wanted to get back at you.”

  Jake stopped and looked at him, examining him, evaluating. Finally he said, “No, you didn’t. You’re just saying that so I won’t go.”

  “Geez, Jake, seriously? You’re gonna let a little ghost story spook you into leaving me high and dry? Come on, buddy. You’re surprising the hell out of me; I wouldn’t have brought it up if I thought you couldn’t handle it.”

  That seemed to stop the man. He had a toothbrush in his hand, but instead of packing it, he sat on the edge of the bed and looked at its bristles. “This kinda shit gives me the willies. Big time.”

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” Ron replied. “I seriously need your help.”

  “I don’t know how much you know about Freedom,” Jake said, still staring at the toothbrush he turned in his hand. “I know you two don’t get along all that well, so I expect she’s never opened up to you about what she’s into.”

  “Into?” Ron replied, wondering for a moment if something weirdly sexual was about to be admitted.

  Jake looked up at him, saw his reaction, and smirked. “Not like that, you pervert.”

  “What?”

  “She’s into all kinds of spiritual crap,” Jake replied, returning his gaze to the toothbrush. “Shamans, that kind of thing. The house is covered in dreamcatchers. She’s got an altar in the closet of our bedroom; you should see it. Man, it looks like something right out of a voodoo movie. Creeps me the fuck out.”

  Nothing Jake was telling him about Freedom was a surprise; she had always been a little odd. What was unusual was how Jake was talking about it; he seemed irritated, but under the irritation Ron could detect legitimate fright. It was something he’d never seen his friend express before.

  “So, I’m not a fan of that stuff. She knows I’m not, so she usually doesn’t involve me in any of it. She lets me watch football on the weekends without interrupting, I let her do her weird spiritual shit without interrupting. As long as the lines don’t cross.”

  “Sure.”

  “You know, compromise.”

  “You don’t gotta tell me about compromise.”

  “Well, although she might say otherwise, my football has never bled into her life the way her stuff has sometimes bled into mine.”

  Ron found himself becoming more intrigued the more Jake talked. “What do you mean?”

  “Like,” Jake said, pausing for a moment, “like sometimes whatever she’s doing seems to…I don’t know, like…invite things. Bring things into the house. Fucked up things.”

  “Things? Like what?”

  “Spirits, demons, I don’t know what you’d call them, bad shit, alright? It’s happened a couple of times. Things start to go weird in the house; stuff moves, drawers open when no one’s in the room, lights flicker – there’s nothing wrong with our electrical, believe me…I did it all, it’s perfect. One morning I found knives on the floor in the kitchen, all arranged in a pattern. Every knife had been removed from every drawer and laid out like some kind of ritual. One was stuck into the laminate, a good two inches buried into the floor.”

  Ron was uncomfortable with Jake’s story. It seemed too improbable, something he would never personally believe, but he didn’t want to derail his friend; he needed him to stay, to help. Finally he said, “That would be freaky.”

  “Every time weird shit like that happens, I talk to her about it, tell her I’m pissed that something’s going on. She argues with me, but I know she knows exactly what I’m talking about. I can see it on her face, it’s like, ‘oh, it’s happening because of that,’ something she’s done with her woowoo shit, and sure enough, a day later things are back to normal, like she went and fixed it. It’s always something she’s been causing.”

  He’s taking this seriously, Ron thought, no longer worried that Jake might consider him crazy.

  “So, I don’t like this shit, Ron,” Jake said, looking up again. “I’ve hated it since I was young. And I get enough of it at home, from her. I could use a break.”

  “I promise you, I’m not causing it,” Ron replied. “Whatever is going on here, it’s not because of anything I’m doing.”

  “Well, that’s even worse!” Jake said. “At least Freedom knows how to stop it when I bitch about it!”

  Ron knew he needed to move the conversation toward normality if he had any hope of convincing his friend to stay. “Look, let’s just concentrate on the stuff that has to get done. The plumbing, replacing the trim, getting this place ready to survive a winter. There’s no way I’m going to finish it all without your help, you know that.”

  “Yeah,” Jake admitted, returning the toothbrush to the adjacent bathroom. “I guess.” He seemed a little sheepish, as though he’d overreacted to what Ron had told him. “But if things get too fucked up, I reserve the right to leave.” He returned to his bag and removed the noise machine, unwrapping the cord.

  “Let me ask you a question,” Ron said. “I mean this seriously: do you really believe in any of this? What I described in the back yard, the tapping at the window…the stuff Freedom does?”

  “I do.” He continued to unpack.

  Ron nodded, then returned to the living room, sipping at his coffee.

  Maybe I should take my own advice, he thought, and just try to ignore things. Concentrate on the tasks. Forget all the weird shit, don’t give it any mind.

  Maybe it’ll go away.

  - - -

  Funny how daylight makes things seem normal, Ron thought as he carried another handful of boards to where Jake had set up his saw. Although wisps of fog still hung in the trees, most of it had burned off quickly and the afternoon was sunny and warm. They worked to replace exterior trim, removing pieces that were too far gone to be worth painting, nailing in freshly cut sections. It made the house look even stranger, its partial paint job now interrupted with bright bare wood.

  As evening approached, the two exhausted men retired inside, sharing more beers. Ron was careful to avoid any discussion of the previous night’s events. Old times, politics, and catching up on mutual acquaintances seemed more in order, and by the time Ron’s eyelids felt heavy they’d managed to skirt around the unspoken subject of woowoo successfully. Ron wished Jake a good night and headed up the stairs.

  He was halfway up when Jake called to him. “I’m keeping a shotgun loaded by my bed, just so you know.”

  “Good,” Ron replied and kept walking. Subject not forgotten, he thought as he ascended. Still right there, under the surface, easily acknowledged by both of us.

  Ron brushed his teeth and got into bed, wondering what the night had in store, hoping there might be a reprieve.

  - - -

  “You idiot!” Ron said to himself. “It’ll never make it. They’ll find out before it even arrives! You have totally fucked yourself!”

  A crushing wave of guilt descended, making him feel as if all was lost, that it was only a matter of time before he’d be caught and his life would be over.

  “Sending a head through the mail!” he muttered to himself. “Why wouldn’t you just leave it in the box and cart it in the U-Haul, like everything else? It’s like you want to get caught!”

  Panic began to set in as he realized his options were few. At some point, someone in the postal system would wonder what the smell was, why strange liquid was leaking from the package – for god’s sake, why the package itself was wrapped like a bowling ball, obviously round, obviously the size of…

  “They’ll hunt me down for sure. It’s only a matter of time. So stupid!”

  He’d kept the dismembered body locked away in a box in the cellar successfully for many years. It had been so long, he
almost couldn’t remember why it was there in the first place, although he was sure he’d been the one responsible. There was no question that he murdered a man and hid the remains, tucked it back in the far corners of the cellar and surrounded it with other boxes. There it sat for years, somehow avoiding detection by bugs and critters, and especially other people – Elenore, Robbie, neighbors, the authorities. Hell, even the dog that had been part of the family for a few years never found it.

  “So, now it’s time to move everything, and you fuck up the most important part!” Ron said to no one in particular, pacing in the new house, shocked at his own incompetence. He remembered taking the package to the post office and applying a number of stamps until it had enough postage to make it; he remembered handwriting the destination on the wrapping, the letters and numbers rising over the ridge that covered the head’s nose. Placing it into the mail chute. Walking away like he’d done the right thing.

  “Stupid!”

  Somehow, he had the wherewithal to transport the rest of the corpse without involving the federal government’s postal system, but for some damned reason, he thought it would be best to mail the fucking head to his new home.

  “You want to get caught!” he said, still pacing, feeling anxious and sick to his stomach. “It’s a cry for help. You murdered that person years ago, kept the chopped-up body in the cellar for all those years, just to fuck it all up and mail the goddamn head instead of simply moving it!”

  Maybe they’ll lose it, he thought. The post office loses stuff all the time, right?

  Maybe the address will rub off and they won’t be able to track me down. Maybe it’ll get damaged in transit, pulverized between two other packages, somehow turned to dust.

  He pictured the head, bouncing inside a mail bag on the back of a truck, barreling down I-5 on its way to a processing center, where someone would try to load it into a machine that would automatically read its address and bar code. Its unusual shape would never survive the system, he was sure – it would gum up the works, trip an alarm, halt processing. The nose would get caught on a metal gate as packages stacked up behind it, building pressure. Blood would seep from between the layers of wrapping, streaking the conveyor belts, staining other packages and eventually triggering something that required human interaction. A worker would remove the oddly shaped package from the gate, lifting it quickly so the other packages could continue along the conveyor. They’d march the package over to a special machine, the one they used to check suspicious packages for bombs. They’d place it on a small platform so that a giant x-ray could expose the package’s contents. They’d see the eyes, the tongue…the goddamn nose that got caught on the metal gate. The rough severing of the neck.

  Maybe they’ll think it’s just a souvenir, like those shrunken heads you can buy on the wharf. Maybe the worker won’t give a shit. There’s a chance he might put it back on the conveyor and let it go through. Maybe it’ll show up here at the house in a few days, just like I planned.

  No. They’re not stupid. It’ll smell, it’ll be leaking blood. They’ll alert someone, and that someone will determine a murder was committed. They’ll read the address, and they’ll come for me.

  He sat up in bed, feeling cold and clammy. A hand went to his forehead where he felt moisture; for a moment he wondered if the roof was leaking. Realizing it was only sweat, he forced himself to lay back down. The pillow was squishy and soft, soaked.

  Fucking dream, he thought as he glanced at the alarm clock, seeing 2:38. Go back to sleep.

  He tossed and turned for another ten minutes, until he decided he’d never drift off unless he switched out his pillow for something drier. Tossing the covers back, he let his legs fall to the floor and he stood up.

  Through the dark windows he could see McLean in the distance, its lights faintly obscured through the trees. Everything seemed quiet and still, and he resisted looking down, afraid he’d see something disturbing in the back yard.

  A thump from above caused him to jump. Like the thump he’d heard previous nights, it was muffled, as though something heavy had fallen on carpet. He waited, listening. After a few moments of silence, the familiar sound of steps returned; steps on the staircase, someone climbing them. He grabbed his robe and went for the door. When he reached the upper hallway, he stopped to look over the side, down into the living room.

  Something was definitely wrong.

  The room was dark, but what little light came through the windows made the flooring look white, and in motion: it was a dim layer of fog near the ground, hanging in the air above the floor like a pillowy carpet. He made his way downstairs, and as he reached for the light, he was startled by the shadow of a figure.

  Someone – or something – was sitting in the recliner of the living room.

  He flicked the switch and squinted. Jake sat in the recliner, a gun lying across his lap. Surrounding him, on the ground around the chair, were mounds of white. At first Ron was confused, but spying the empty shell of a pillow from the couch, lying on the floor amongst the scattered batting, he realized that, for some reason, the pillow had been gutted, its contents spread all over the floor.

  “Jake?”

  His friend snapped awake, quickly raising the shotgun and pointing it at him.

  Ron’s hands went into the air. “Jake! It’s me! Don’t shoot!”

  His friend had one eye closed and the other squinting down the sight. Ron felt a moment of terror. This is how it happens. An accident. A simple mistake. He readied himself for a blast from the firearm, unsure if his friend was really awake or just moving on instinct.

  Time seemed to freeze as Ron awaited his fate. Jake’s face remained the same for a long time, until finally he seemed to become aware of what was happening. Ron watched as recognition appeared in his friend’s eyes, and the barrel dipped. “Ron?”

  “It’s me, buddy,” Ron replied, his hands still in the air above his head as though he was being robbed. “Can you lower the gun?”

  Jake seemed unaware he was holding one. He looked at his hands, and suddenly seemed shocked that he had the firearm pointed at his friend. The barrel swung to the side and down.

  “You OK?” Ron asked, looking around the room at the contents of the gutted pillow.

  Jake seemed to sense how odd things looked. “Uh, yeah. I’m OK.”

  Ron walked to the sofa across from where Jake was sitting. “Kind of a mess in here.”

  “Yeah,” Jake acknowledged. “I…” He fumbled with what to say. “I…well, fuck it all, Ron. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” Ron asked, settling into the sofa.

  “I…I thought the stuff inside the pillow would…Jesus Christ, I’m a little fucked up, buddy.”

  “It’s OK,” Ron replied. “Just keep the shotgun pointed away from me, and tell me what’s going on.”

  Jake checked the safety and placed the gun on the floor, the barrel pointing behind him. “I…I thought I heard something, so I got up to see what it was.”

  “OK.”

  “There were these…creatures. Small, like the size of rats. They were running around in here. It was so weird; they’d rise up out of the flooring, then dip back down into it. I got the gun, but then I realized if I shot at them, it’d ruin your furniture, and the floors. We’d have a mess I’d have to fix. So… they kind of cornered me in this chair, and for some reason, I decided that…god, this is totally insane, but for some stupid reason I thought that if I spread the stuffing from that pillow around me, it would keep them away. Like a buffer they wouldn’t cross.”

  “So, you tore up a pillow?”

  “Yeah, that one that was on the chair,” Jake replied, looking down until he found the pillow’s carcass lying amongst the batting. “That one there, the blue one. Christ, I’m sorry buddy, I don’t know what I was thinking, I tore your pillow to shreds. Elenore will be pissed.”

  “It’s no biggie. I hated that pillow anyway.”

  “They were all over the floor, scampering back and
forth, appearing and disappearing. Why I thought the stuffing would keep them away I don’t know, I just did.”

  “No rats here now, Jake.”

  “They weren’t rats, they had little domes on their backs, like turtles, but they moved really fast.”

  “You were dreaming.”

  “Right…right. Of course.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t shoot. We’d have buckshot everywhere.”

  “Yeah…”

  “Did it work?”

  “What?”

  “The stuffing? It kept them away?”

  “I…” Jake looked confused, as though part of his mind was still there, replaying earlier events. “I…think so. I remember spreading it around, and I put the gun in my lap, across the arms of the chair, and…I guess I fell asleep.”

  Ron rose from the couch and walked to the windows, stepping on the batting as he went. When he reached them, he cupped his hands and looked out, wondering if he might see Jake’s creatures outside, scampering over the lawn. The back yard seemed empty and quiet, the light from the windows casting just enough to illuminate the blackberry bramble.

  “Are they out there?” Jake asked.

  “What? Your turtles? Nah, there’s nothing out there.” Ron turned from the window to look at his friend. “I guess we should go back to sleep. It’s 3 AM.”

  “This is fucked up, Ron,” Jake said, looking at the mess. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it, we’ll clean it up in the morning.”

  “No, I mean everything. The ghosts, the creatures. All of it. It’s all fucked up.”

  “I had a bad dream, too. It’s that pizza we ate just before bed. I’ve still got heartburn from the sausage.”

  Jake rose from the chair. He still seemed dulled; shell-shocked by something. He moved to the door of the guest room as though he was sleepwalking. “Good night,” he said.

  “Good night,” Ron replied, looking at the mess on the floor. In all the years he’d known Jake, he’d never seen him behave so strangely. We’ve never spent nights together, though…I wonder if he’s a sleepwalker, if this is something he’s done before. I could ask Freedom…